Veruca Salt is an alternative rock group of the 1990s and 2000s. Veruca Salt was formed alongside the friendship of Louise Post and Nina Gordon. Introduced by Gordon's good friend, actress Lili Taylor, Gordon and Post quickly bonded and formed what is now known as Veruca Salt. Originally, the band was an Indigo Girls-inspired acoustic act, but the women quickly realized this wasn't their sound. They quickly enlisted bass player Steve Lack and eventually Gordon's brother Jim Shapiro joined as a drummer, even though he originally was just drumming as a favor to his sister. Veruca Salt released a self-funded demo tape and shopped it to labels, and began to play a handful of small club shows.

Africa s resource boom has lifted growth throughout the region, but it has been less successful in improving citizen s well-being and livelihoods. People living in Africa s resource-rich countries are 3 percent less literate, have shorter life expectancy by 4.5 years, and have higher rates of malnutrition among women and children. This slow pace of poverty reduction is frequently attributed to economic growth that is led by natural resources the so-called natural resource curse. Going beyond the aggregate impact, do communities living close to mining centers suffer from a resource curse as well?